Your argument “well it’s economic growth” can be used for anything. Paying a hitman to kill your wife is technically economic growth. It doesn’t make space exploration some particularly wonderful venture with huge benefits throughout society, because those benefits won’t actually be shared with society to the same degree if it’s a private venture. You’re comparing public apples to private oranges, and somehow convincing yourself they’re the exact same.
Oh, and I love how you’re comparing Bezos to a nation now. That’s rich. I mean, not as rich as he is, but your point hasn’t had a chance to exploit its workers or third party contractors yet. For the record, conflating Bezos with the birth of a nation is exactly what you’re accusing me of doing: creating a distraction, and not a logical argument.
And, sure! There’s going to be an economic benefit of some sort, I guess. But so would actually taxing Amazon and using that money for any number of public investments, like better education. How about this, why don’t you actually use something that actually supports your argument as a reference point?
Finally, I think if you can look back over the course of a man’s relatively short career and point out how little of a fuck he gives about the common man, you can also say “probably not a great idea that he’s heading up a strip-mining operation to the moon”.
Edit: For the record, I think space exploration is important, needed, and definitely should happen. But allowing a bunch of billionaires to head it up just means that we’re allowing a known menace to escape its containment, and allowing them to reach the stars first. Know how you said no nation was born without theft or violence or nefarious deeds? Yeah, this is exactly how it happens.
